LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand PlaybookHow to spark awareness, engage, and convert your target audience across the buyer's journey

Source: IPA Study, Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 2

As a marketer, do you focus on brand or demand?

Brand Marketing

Developing and nurturing a relationship with your audience and positioning your brand as a trusted, helpful industry leader over the long term, so when they’re ready to buy, buyers think of your products and services first.

Demand Marketing

Creating urgency around specific offerings and services to drive immediate growth. These activities are highly targeted to encourage and excite key audiences to drive demand and help your business achieve its goals.

Chances are you answered “brand building” or “generating more leads.” Like other marketers, you likely employ brand or demand marketing at different times as part of your growth strategy, but why is brand vs. performance marketing so divisive? Do we really have to make trade-offs?

The conflict between long and short-term metrics

% re

porti

ng v

ery

larg

e ef

fect

s

Campaign duration in months

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%0-6 7-18 19-30 >30

Brand Marketing Effects Demand Marketing Effects

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 3

Cindy PhanSenior Manager of Global Digital

Strategy, VMware

Lauren RuotoloDirector of Creative

Partnerships, Johnson & Johnson

Stuart AplinHead of Acquisition Marketing, London

Business School

Marit van der LouwInternational

Content Marketer, TOPdesk

Morten Jensen Senior Marketing

Manager, Jabra

Claudio LudovisiAssistant Dean, Marketing

Strategy and Corporate Relations, Pepperdine University, Graziado School of Business

In this playbook, we’ll show you how to achieve the ideal balance between brand and demand with

advice from marketing experts and global brands like Johnson & Johnson, VMWare, and Mercedes-Benz.

A study from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising shows that the optimal balance of brand and demand in both digital and traditional marketing is a 60/40 split: 60% branding, 40% direct response. That’s how you ensure optimal impact when it comes to pricing power, awareness, and sales.

This means marketers should consider the entire buyer’s journey when setting up their campaigns. And many do! We surveyed advertisers using LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and found more than 50% say they want to run brand and demand campaigns together, that consider the entire buyer journey – from interested visitor to paying customer. Like many marketers, you likely are using a brand to demand strategy.

Synchronize brand and demand to drive exceptional performance

Con

vers

ion

Rate

Acquisition only

0.2%

1.5%

1.0%

0.5%

0.0%

Brand & Acquisition

1.2%Brand Marketing

60%

Demand Marketing

40%

Source: IPA Study, Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 4

Why run your brand and demand campaigns on LinkedIn?

Right Audience

With over 706 million members*, LinkedIn has assembled the world’s largest professional audience. Our members regularly spend time on LinkedIn sharing engaging moments, joining in conversations and learning from industry leaders. Coupled with our robust member and company data, you can reach organizations and teams of people who are making buying decisions together.

Right Environment

For the third year in a row, LinkedIn was recognized as the most trusted social platform globally in Business Insider’s Digital Trust report. LinkedIn is the premier digital platform where members invest time to build and grow their professional community and reputations. Moreover, we’ve created an environment where consumers and brands alike feel respected and safe.

Right Engagement

Finally, our audience is unique because our members are purposeful when they visit our platform. They invest time in LinkedIn to be more productive and successful, to learn and grow. As a result, they’re more interested in learning about brands on LinkedIn when compared to other platforms.

*As of August 2020

Soon, we’ll introduce Reach Optimization and Reach & Frequency metrics in the Forecasting Tool to help you capitalize on crucial levers for your brand’s growth. Reach Optimization optimizes towards the number of unique members in your target audience who see your ads, and Reach & Frequency metrics help you set up those reach-optimized campaigns for success.

Take advantage of your LinkedIn toolkitBefore showing which ads and targeting combinations you should use to achieve your brand and demand objectives, let’s quickly walk through the tools you can already access on LinkedIn.

These tools will be essential to how you use different ad formats and targeting across LinkedIn to engage and convert your target audience.

Audience features

The sheer power of LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities remains a highly effective way to reach a precise audience. Let’s take a look at our suite of targeting facets:

Location: With members in over 2.8 million locales, you can reach professionals based on their recent and/or permanent location

Company: Company Name, Followers, Growth Rate, Category, Size, Industry or Connections

Job Experience: Job Function, Seniority, Title, Skills, Years of Experience

Interest and Traits: Groups, Interests or Traits

Education: Degrees, Fields of Study, Schools

We also enable you to reach your audience using website retargeting, engagement retargeting, company list, contact list, and lookalikes.

Retargeting by engagement is the latest addition to our Matched Audiences suite. With engagement retargeting, you can remarket to members based on the actions they’ve taken on LinkedIn including:

• Retargeting video viewers by 25%, 50%, 75% completion rate as well as fully viewed

• Retargeting Lead Gen Form opens or submitters

You can learn more about our full suite of audience features in our Targeting Guide

Marketers can tap into our powerful demographic data to:

Precisely target audiences

Zero in on intent, behavior, engagement, interests and more

Reach everyone involved in the buying decision

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 5

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 6

Ad Solutions

LinkedIn offers many types of ad formats you can use to reach your target audience throughout the LinkedIn ecosystem, including the feed and in messaging. Here’s an overview of our most popular ad formats:

Sponsored Content

Sponsored Messaging

Single Image AdsCapture attention with a powerful visual

Message AdsSend direct messages toyour prospects to sparkimmediate action

Carousel AdsTell a story with a swipeable series of cards

Conversation AdsStart quality conversations with professionals through a choose your own path experience

Video AdsCaptivate your audience with sight, sound and motion

Lead Gen FormsCollect quality leads using forms that are pre-filled with LinkedIn profile data

LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN)

With LAN, you can extend your Sponsored Content ads to professionals who are active on our Audience Network, scaling your message with up to 25% more reach.

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 7

In Campaign Manager, you’ll see three categories of marketing objectives:

To get started, select your objective in Campaign Manager and you’ll see relevant ad formats, features and bid types.

What’s Campaign Manager?

Campaign Manager is LinkedIn’s advertising platform where anyone can create, launch, and evaluate the performance of their LinkedIn ad campaigns.

Tip: Soon, you’ll be able to include multiple ad formats within a single LinkedIn campaign.

1. Awareness: These campaigns maximize your brand’s share-of-voice through impressions.

2. Consideration: These campaigns encourage prospects to find out more about your business by taking actions. This usually translates as clicks that take them to a landing page, or other engagement such as encouraging social actions and views.

3. Conversion: These campaigns are focused on lead generation and allow you to track actions on your website, such as whitepaper downloads.

Let’s jump into the strategies and tactics you can harness to create a full-funnel experience using a mix of our targeting facets and ads.

Marketing Objective LinkedIn Ad Formats Targeting

Feed Messaging Right-Rail Attributes and Matched Audiences

Brand (Awareness)

Video Ads,* Single Image Ads,* LinkedIn Audience Network

Conversation Ads Spotlight Ads Job function + Seniority,Skills or Job Titles,Interest Targeting,Lookalike audiences

Consideration & Engagement

Single Image Ads,* Carousel Ads, LinkedIn Audience Network

Conversation Ads Spotlight Ads, Follower Ads, Text Ads

Job titles + Member Traits,Uploaded Lists, Website Retargeting,Retargeting by Engagement

Demand (Conversion)

Single Image Ads,*Carousel Ads, LinkedIn Audience Network

Message Ads Spotlight Ads, Follower Ads, Text Ads

Uploaded Lists,Website Retargeting,Retargeting by Engagement

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 8

1. Awareness Ideas to help you get started

• Use a series of Video Ads to captivate your audience and bring awareness to a cause, an event, or a brand campaign.

• Use Single Image and Video Ads in parallel to bring visual stories to life, highlighting interactive and engaging customer stories in testimonial form while promoting more case study examples in a Single Image Ad.

• Use Conversation Ads to deliver personalized stories at scale and include rich media in the body of your message to provide visual context about the subject of your message.

Formats to consider

Video Ads, Single Image Ads, Conversation Ads Pro tip: Retarget those that watched 25% or more of your Video

Ad with another Video Ad or a Single Image Ad to deepen engagement and provide your audience the information they need during the early stages of their buying process.

Winning combinations by marketing objective

Tear a page from the playbooks of successful LinkedIn customers to optimize your campaigns:

*We also recommend using the LinkedIn Audience Network for Brand, Consideration, and Engagement objectives to extend your Single Image and Video Ad campaigns to premium publishers.

Formats to consider

Single Image Ads, Carousel Ads, Conversation Ads

Formats to consider

Single Image Ads, Carousel Ads, Message Ads, Lead Gen Forms

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 9

2. Consideration

3. Conversions

Ideas to help you get started

To drive website visits Use a Single Image Ad along with a Conversation Ad to provide your audience with multiple entry points for taking that next action in the funnel. This can include those you want to retarget who have visited high-intent pages on your website or that downloaded a piece of content.

To drive engagementUse a Video Ad with a Carousel Ad to incorporate as many visual components into your middle-of-the-funnel campaign as possible, whether it’s to enable deeper storytelling or show product capabilities. This combination is great to show a video preview of an upcoming event you’re driving registrations for, with Carousel Ads displaying a few keynote or featured speakers.

Ideas to help you get started

Lead generation Use a Single Image Ad and Message Ad together with a Lead Gen Form to drive product demos, free trials or event registrations.

Pro tip: Retarget those that previously submitted your Lead Gen Form for middle of the funnel conversions, such as content downloads, and deliver a personalized message with a single CTA to their LinkedIn Messaging inbox with a Message Ad.

Website conversionsUse a Single Image Ad with a Message Ad to drive more high-intent conversion opportunities such as white paper downloads or sales demos.

Pro tip: Retarget website visitors that downloaded your top-of-funnel content and serve them bottom-of-the-funnel thought leadership or product information to capitalize on brand familiarity and known engagement.

Pro tip: Split your audience into two segments: Those that watched less than 50% of your video and those that watched more than 50%. Show the former a shorter video on a different topic. Tap further into the engagement of the latter by showing another video around the same length that focuses more on a middle-funnel topic.

To drive video views Use Video Ads of varying lengths to increase reach and engagement with a visual story. This can include those you want to retarget who watched part or all of a prior video ad.

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 10

A prospect’s full journey on LinkedIn

Awareness

Video Ad

Watches

Consideration

Single Image + Lead Gen Form

Opens

Conversion

Message Ad

Converts

Conversion

Lead Gen Form

To engage your audience across the entire buyer journey, create your campaigns based on your audience, objective and ad format. For example, say your campaign is focused on lead generation. You can retarget those who viewed a Video Ad with a Message Ad and a Lead Gen Form, providing multiple opportunities for a prospect to convert – whether in the feed or in LinkedIn messaging.

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 11

How to measure success

To measure your campaign success, we suggest you evaluate the following key metrics:

In Campaign Manager, you can view performance metrics, like many of those mentioned above, per campaign. You can use attribution modeling tools, to help you evaluate the success of your LinkedIn spend holistically.

Awareness

Consideration

Engagement

• Video Completion Rate

• Cost per Video Completion

• Reach and Average Frequency

• Engagement: CTR or Engagement rate

• Quality of traffic: Time on Site, Bounce Rate, Pages Visited or Website Demographics

• Leads: Cost per Lead or Lead Volume

• Backend Metrics: MQL, SQL or Pipeline Acceleration

Soon we’ll be introducing company engagement insights so marketers like you can ensure you’re reaching the right people within target accounts both on LinkedIn and with your website. With these insights you can focus your spend on accounts that are low in awareness or engagement, and prioritize highly engaged accounts for more conversion oriented campaigns.

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 12

Model your campaigns after these winning examples

Here you’ll find best-in-class examples of brands leveraging multiple LinkedIn ads and advanced targeting facets to create a great buyer experience and help prospects move more quickly through the buyer’s journey.

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 13

BambooHR

Challenge

As a leader in human resources software for small and medium-sized businesses, BambooHR wanted to increase brand awareness as more businesses were turning to remote work, while growing leads in the middle of the funnel. To that end, it aimed to increase conversion rates for key pieces of thought leadership content on topics such as remote work and culture.

Solution

BambooHR created a highly focused campaign aimed at consideration and conversion objectives. The team uploaded a list of key companies and crafted a targeting strategy based on website activity, job seniority, job title, and member interests related to HR. To build both brand awareness with key companies and increase leads, the BambooHR team promoted thought leadership around key topics of interest to its target audience. Single Image Ads provided high-engagement touchpoints in the LinkedIn feed, and Message Ads featuring a single call-to-action provided direct conversion opportunities.

Results

Leveraging website retargeting, Matched Audiences, and multiple ad formats (Single Image and Message Ads), BambooHR drove higher engagement and conversions from key audiences.

Results

In many of its campaigns, VMware generated click-through-rates 3x higher and Cost per Lead 50% lower than LinkedIn industry benchmarks. 3x

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 14

VMware

Challenge

As a global leader providing cloud computing and virtualization software and services, VMware wanted to serve the right piece of content to help influencers and decision makers at key companies through the buying process.

Solution

VMware has developed a sophisticated omni-channel framework, leveraging multiple channels, data points, targeting segments, and offerings to deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time. VMware created a series of campaigns targeting named accounts, honing in on website activities, seniority, job titles, member interests and geography.

To bring this strategy to life on LinkedIn, the company used a mix of Single Image, Carousel, and Video Ads to deliver different offers – from thought leadership to product trials – based on stage of the funnel and previous engagement behavior. VMware retargeted those that watched more than 25% of a Video Ad with the next journey stage content offer. The combination of LinkedIn feed formats allowed the company to bring its story to life, capture the highest levels of interest, and drive key accounts to conversion points throughout the funnel.

“Engaging with VMware customers and prospects across digital channels with relevant and personalized experiences is essential to our omni-channel marketing strategy. Aligning campaign creative and tone to the mindset of the buyer and where they may be in the customer journey have resulted in successful outcomes.”

Cindy Phan Senior Manager of Global Digital Strategy, VMware

Results

Leveraging the power of LinkedIn Live with a unique combination of Sponsored Content and Message Ads, Johnson & Johnson drove on-demand engagement directed at the industry leaders in global healthcare. Specifically, it generated more than 1 million views and consistently surpassed best-in-class benchmarks for LinkedIn’s Message Ad format.

1M

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 15

Johnson & Johnson

Challenge

As the world’s largest and most broadly based healthcare company, Johnson & Johnson is committed to using its reach and size for good. With its position in the global healthcare ecosystem, Johnson & Johnson searched for a way to address the COVID-19 crisis. Their goal was to generate awareness of their pursuit of producing 1 billion doses of a vaccine while keeping audiences informed about the company’s journey in an engaging and compelling way.

Solution

To help tackle the world’s health challenges during the COVID pandemic, Johnson & Johnson created the “Road to a Vaccine” series. This weekly, live, educational news broadcast showcased Johnson & Johnson’s, and the entire global scientific community’s, work towards developing a vaccine. The series featured interviews with the organization’s Chief Scientific Officer and top scientific minds who are working day and night to combat the novel coronavirus.

Johnson & Johnson took advantage of LinkedIn’s targeting tools to deliver the 8-part series to the right audience, focusing on company names, job titles, member interests, and geography. The company used Single Image and Video Ads in the LinkedIn feed to drive overall awareness of each episode, and Message Ads to engage members in 1:1 conversations on why they should watch.

“It’s important for us to be able to hone in and target global advocates, politicians, doctors and nurses. When we say we want to reach certain companies to deliver great content that drives the conversation forward, LinkedIn’s quality audience gives us the ability to do just that.”

Lauren RuotoloDirector of Creative Partnerships, Johnson & Johnson

Results

By combining video and messaging, Mercedes-Benz Australia generated open and click through rates to its offer nearly twice as high as benchmark metrics. 2x

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 16

Mercedes-Benz Australia

Challenge

Looking for new ways to innovatively reach and engage their target audience, Mercedes-Benz Australia needed to drive interest for its new C-Class car. It needed to run a short-term promotion, highlighting a free engine upgrade when members signed up during the offer period, and it needed to do this in a visual way to capture and engage the business community at large.

Solution

For its full-funnel approach, Mercedes-Benz Australia needed a way to deliver a visual experience of what its upgrades looked like, with an opportunity for car-buyers to take immediate action on this offer if they wanted to get behind the wheel of a C-Class. To do this, they leveraged Video Ads and Message Ads together to bring its C-Class to life in a visual way, while delivering 1:1, personalized messages to the inboxes of millions. Video Ads provided a way to tell the story of the new C-Class with a focus on unbeatable extras and upgrades that reached hundreds of thousands of prospective customers in the LinkedIn Feed. Message Ads reinforced the short-term offer to sign up to win these upgrades with a single Call-to-Action. Combined with targeting features such as job seniority and gender, Mercedes-Benz Australia created multiple opportunities for its audience to learn about why they should want a C-Class, with the ability to take action.

Results

This multi-format approach not only increased the frequency of ad exposure by 10x, but resulted in LinkedIn Lead Gen Form completion rates that rose 17% among those who were exposed to multiple formats. Because of this, Cost per Lead (CPL) dropped by 9% and stands 60% below benchmark averages. 10x

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 17

London Business School

Challenge

Graduate management education represents a major investment for millions around the world, and the high price tag leads to a lengthy consideration period, making it essential for business schools to get in front of prospects throughout their journey, not just at the end of it. With this in mind, London Business School needed to increase their brand awareness and preference while continuing to deliver a healthy pipeline of leads for the Masters in Financial Analysis programme.

Solution

To achieve their goals, London Business School took a multi-format approach, which was informed by awareness of the need to increase salience and Share of Voice within a competitive market. Targeting by field of study, years of experience, and geographic location, London Business School used Text Ads to invite prospects to “Fuel your future” and “Kick-start your career”. Sponsored Content activity added a fuller picture through stories of successful graduates and insights about the course experience. This meant that, when personalized Message Ads arrived inviting potential students to take action, they were met with a powerful response. By dialing up reach and frequency through a multi-format approach to LinkedIn campaigns for its Masters in Financial Analysis (MFA) programme, London Business School more than doubled click-through rate (CTR) while achieving incredible results.

“Combining Text Ads, Sponsored Content activity and Message Ads within a single integrated campaign significantly increased our frequency and joined the dots between brand and direct response messaging in our audience members’ minds. The results have been incredibly positive and it’s an approach that we’ll be continuing as we look at new opportunities on LinkedIn.”

Stuart Aplin Head of Acquisition Marketing, London Business School

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 18

TOPdesk

Challenge

As one of the fastest growing service management platforms worldwide, TOPdesk needed a way to stay connected with key professionals at every step of the buyer’s journey. Specifically, it needed a full-funnel strategy to engage and convert prospective customers in an ever-competitive services industry.

Solution

For its full-funnel campaigns, TOPdesk created a thorough, in-depth strategy for converting leads at all stages of the buyer journey. It embraced a multilevel targeting approach including attribution targeting combined with targeting the audience by website activity, product interest, and previous conversion events. For top-to-middle of the funnel campaigns, it promoted Video Ads and Single Image Ads containing a Lead Gen Form. It then retargeted those that had watched its Video Ads or visited the Lead Gen Forms with another Single Image Ad promoting a piece of thought leadership that contained another Lead Gen Form. TOPdesk retargeted previous Lead Gen Form submitters with Single Image Ads to promote bottom-of-the-funnel conversion events, such as product trials. Using a combination of ad formats, targeting, and retargeting, the global content team at TOPdesk created a multi-stage campaign strategy spanning early awareness to conversion.

“The new remarketing capabilities for Lead Gen Forms and Video enable us to complete the full-funnel strategy we’ve been implementing on LinkedIn.”

Marit van der LouwInternational Content Marketer, TOPdesk

Results

Since using the remarketing capabilities for Lead Gen Forms and Video Ads, TOPDesk increased its conversion rate by 20%, while reducing its cost per conversion by 24%. +20%

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 19

Jabra

Challenge

Jabra is a global leader in audio equipment that powers the ways businesses communicate and get work done. With remote work on the rise, Jabra needed a way to build a B2B pipeline of companies searching for the equipment to make this shift to a digital and distributed workforce.

Solution

Turning to LinkedIn for lead generation, Jabra leveraged LinkedIn’s retargeting and Company Targeting to reach key accounts, while segmenting based on website activity, job functions, and member interests. Video Ads allowed Jabra to tell a visual story of how it was helping retailers make the shift to a digital workforce powered by its technology. At the same time, it used Single Image Ads with a Lead Gen Form to push that audience further down the funnel.

“We tested retargeting by Lead Gen Forms against our normal targeting tactics and found the CTR to be 2-3 times higher. Although still early in the process, we find that leads generated from retargeting have a higher qualification rate from MQL to SQL.”

Morten Jensen Senior Marketing Manager, Jabra

Results

By retargeting prospective buyers based on those that opened a Lead Gen Form but didn’t submit, Jabra beat its benchmarks for engagement while increasing conversion rates at the bottom of the funnel.

LinkedIn’s Brand and Demand Playbook | 20

Pepperdine

Challenge

Pepperdine University’s Graziadio Business School is known for its top 100 Business School ranking, coupled with flexible programs and affordable tuition. Seeking to expand its student body, Pepperdine needed to quickly and effectively drive awareness of a new merit scholarship opportunity that would attract the right potential candidates.

Solution

Pepperdine created a unique target audience based on strong historical performance, combined with LinkedIn’s audience features to target by educational level, field of study, and member interests. Single Image Ads helped increase visibility of the Graziadio Business School and the scholarship opportunity, while Message Ads made it possible to scale personalized outreach for lead generation. Lead Gen Forms on both formats empowered prospective students to learn more with a single click.

"What worked really well for us was the message ad campaign….there was a real return on investment from the time we did it to the actual leads we got out of it."

Claudio LudovisiAssistant Dean, Marketing Strategy and Corporate Relations, Pepperdine University, Graziadio School of Business 15+

Results

The school drove more than 700 leads from Messaging alone. Using Single Image Ads and Message Ads in tandem coupled with sophisticated targeting, it drove more than 15 enrollments, with Sponsored Content adding even more, leading to outstanding ROI.

We hope this playbook provided inspiration for your brand and demand campaigns.

For more resources to help you get started today visit:

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